CHAPTER VI--THE KING OF APEMAMA: DEVIL-WORK
The ocean beach of Apemama was our daily resort. The coast is
broken by shallow bays. The reef is detached, elevated, and
includes a lagoon about knee-deep, the unrestful spending-basin of
the surf. The beach is now of fine sand, now of broken coral. The
trend of the coast being convex, scarce a quarter of a mile of it
is to be seen at once; the land being so low, the horizon appears
within a stone-cast; and the narrow prospect enhances the sense of
privacy. Man avoids the place--even his footprints are uncommon;
but a great number of birds hover and pipe there fishing, and leave
crooked tracks upon the sand. Apart from these, the only sound
(and I was going to say the only society), is that of the breakers
on the reef.
On each projection of the coast, the bank of coral clinkers
immediately above the beach has been levelled, and a pillar built,
perhaps breast-high. These are not sepulchral; all the dead being
buried on the inhabited side of the island, close to men's houses,
and (what is worse) to their wells. I was told they were to
protect the isle against inroads from the sea--divine or diabolical
martellos, probably sacred to Taburik, God of Thunder.
The bay immediately opposite Equator Town, which we called Fu Bay,
in honour of our cook, was thus fortified on either horn. It was
well sheltered by the reef, the enclosed water clear and tranquil,
the enclosing beach curved like a horseshoe, and both steep and
broad. The path debouched about the midst of the re-entrant angle,
the woods stopping some distance inland. In front, between the
fringe of the wood and the crown of the beach, there had been
designed a regular figure, like the court for some new variety of
tennis, with borders of round stones imbedded, and pointed at the
angles with low posts, likewise of stone. This was the king's Pray
Place. When he prayed, what he prayed for, and to whom he
addressed his supplications I could never learn. The ground was
tapu.
In the angle, by the mouth of the path, stood a deserted maniap'.
Near by there had been a house before our coming, which was now
transported and figured for the moment in Equator Town. It had
been, and it would be again when we departed, the residence of the
guardian and wizard of the spot--Tamaiti. Here, in this lone
place, within sound of the sea, he had his dwelling and uncanny
duties. I cannot call to mind another case of a man living on the
ocean side of any open atoll; and Tamaiti must have had strong
nerves, the greater confidence in his own spells, or, what I
believe to be the truth, an enviable scepticism. Whether Tamaiti
had any guardianship of the Pray Place I never heard. But his own
particular chapel stood farther back in the fringe of the wood. It
was a tree of respectable growth. Around it there was drawn a
circle of stones like those that enclosed the Pray Place; in front,
facing towards the sea, a stone of a much greater size, and
somewhat hollowed, like a piscina, stood close against the trunk;
in front of that again a conical pile of gravel. In the hollow of
what I have called the piscina (though it proved to be a magic
seat) lay an offering of green cocoa-nuts; and when you looked up
you found the boughs of the tree to be laden with strange fruit:
palm-branches elaborately plaited, and beautiful models of canoes,
finished and rigged to the least detail. The whole had the
appearance of a mid-summer and sylvan Christmas-tree al fresco.
Yet we were already well enough acquainted in the Gilberts to
recognise it, at the first sight, for a piece of wizardry, or, as
they say in the group, of Devil-work.
The plaited palms were what we recognised. We had seen them before
on Apaiang, the most christianised of all these islands; where
excellent Mr. Bingham lived and laboured and has left golden
memories; whence all the education in the northern Gilberts traces
its descent; and where we were boarded by little native Sunday-
school misses in clean frocks, with demure faces, and singing hymns
as to the manner born.
Our experience of Devil-work at Apaiang had been as follows:- It
chanced we were benighted at the house of Captain Tierney. My wife
and I lodged with a Chinaman some half a mile away; and thither
Captain Reid and a native boy escorted us by torch-light. On the
way the torch went out, and we took shelter in a small and lonely
Christian chapel to rekindle it. Stuck in the rafters of the
chapel was a branch of knotted palm. 'What is that?' I asked. 'O,
that's Devil-work,' said the Captain. 'And what is Devil-work?' I
inquired. 'If you like, I'll show you some when we get to
Johnnie's,' he replied. 'Johnnie's' was a quaint little house upon
the crest of the beach, raised some three feet on posts, approached
by stairs; part walled, part trellised. Trophies of advertisement-
photographs were hung up within for decoration. There was a table
and a recess-bed, in which Mrs. Stevenson slept; while I camped on
the matted floor with Johnnie, Mrs. Johnnie, her sister, and the
devil's own regiment of cockroaches. Hither was summoned an old
witch, who looked the part to horror. The lamp was set on the
floor; the crone squatted on the threshold, a green palm-branch in
her hand, the light striking full on her aged features and picking
out behind her, from the black night, timorous faces of spectators.
Our sorceress began with a chanted incantation; it was in the old
tongue, for which I had no interpreter; but ever and again there
ran among the crowd outside that laugh which every traveller in the
islands learns so soon to recognise,--the laugh of terror.
Doubtless these half-Christian folk were shocked, these half-
heathen folk alarmed. Chench or Taburik thus invoked, we put our
questions; the witch knotted the leaves, here a leaf and there a
leaf, plainly on some arithmetical system; studied the result with
great apparent contention of mind; and gave the answers. Sidney
Colvin was in robust health and gone a journey; and we should have
a fair wind upon the morrow: that was the result of our
consultation, for which we paid a dollar. The next day dawned
cloudless and breathless; but I think Captain Reid placed a secret
reliance on the sibyl, for the schooner was got ready for sea. By
eight the lagoon was flawed with long cat's-paws, and the palms
tossed and rustled; before ten we were clear of the passage and
skimming under all plain sail, with bubbling scuppers. So we had
the breeze, which was well worth a dollar in itself; but the
bulletin about my friend in England proved, some six months later,
when I got my mail, to have been groundless. Perhaps London lies
beyond the horizon of the island gods.
Tembinok', in his first dealings, showed himself sternly averse
from superstition: and had not the Equator delayed, we might have
left the island and still supposed him an agnostic. It chanced one
day, however, that he came to our maniap', and found Mrs. Stevenson
in the midst of a game of patience. She explained the game as well
as she was able, and wound up jocularly by telling him this was her
devil-work, and if she won, the Equator would arrive next day.
Tembinok' must have drawn a long breath; we were not so high-and-
dry after all; he need no longer dissemble, and he plunged at once
into confessions. He made devil-work every day, he told us, to
know if ships were coming in; and thereafter brought us regular
reports of the results. It was surprising how regularly he was
wrong; but he always had an explanation ready. There had been some
schooner in the offing out of view; but either she was not bound
for Apemama, or had changed her course, or lay becalmed. I used to
regard the king with veneration as he thus publicly deceived
himself. I saw behind him all the fathers of the Church, all the
philosophers and men of science of the past; before him, all those
that are to come; himself in the midst; the whole visionary series
bowed over the same task of welding incongruities. To the end
Tembinok' spoke reluctantly of the island gods and their worship,
and I learned but little. Taburik is the god of thunder, and deals
in wind and weather. A while since there were wizards who could
call him down in the form of lightning. 'My patha he tell me he
see: you think he lie?' Tienti--pronounced something like
'Chench,' and identified by his majesty with the devil--sends and
removes bodily sickness. He is whistled for in the Paumotuan
manner, and is said to appear; but the king has never seen him.
The doctors treat disease by the aid of Chench: eclectic Tembinok'
at the same time administering 'pain-killer' from his medicine-
chest, so as to give the sufferer both chances. 'I think mo'
betta,' observed his majesty, with more than his usual self-
approval. Apparently the gods are not jealous, and placidly enjoy
both shrine and priest in common. On Tamaiti's medicine-tree, for
instance, the model canoes are hung up ex voto for a prosperous
voyage, and must therefore be dedicated to Taburik, god of the
weather; but the stone in front is the place of sick folk come to
pacify Chench.
It chanced, by great good luck, that even as we spoke of these
affairs, I found myself threatened with a cold. I do not suppose I
was ever glad of a cold before, or shall ever be again; but the
opportunity to see the sorcerers at work was priceless, and I
called in the faculty of Apemama. They came in a body, all in
their Sunday's best and hung with wreaths and shells, the insignia
of the devil-worker. Tamaiti I knew already: Terutak' I saw for
the first time--a tall, lank, raw-boned, serious North-Sea
fisherman turned brown; and there was a third in their company
whose name I never heard, and who played to Tamaiti the part of
famulus. Tamaiti took me in hand first, and led me, conversing
agreeably, to the shores of Fu Bay. The famulus climbed a tree for
some green cocoa-nuts. Tamaiti himself disappeared a while in the
bush and returned with coco tinder, dry leaves, and a spray of
waxberry. I was placed on the stone, with my back to the tree and
my face to windward; between me and the gravel-heap one of the
green nuts was set; and then Tamaiti (having previously bared his
feet, for he had come in canvas shoes, which tortured him) joined
me within the magic circle, hollowed out the top of the gravel-
heap, built his fire in the bottom, and applied a match: it was
one of Bryant and May's. The flame was slow to catch, and the
irreverent sorcerer filled in the time with talk of foreign places-
-of London, and 'companies,' and how much money they had; of San
Francisco, and the nefarious fogs, 'all the same smoke,' which had
been so nearly the occasion of his death. I tried vainly to lead
him to the matter in hand. 'Everybody make medicine,' he said
lightly. And when I asked him if he were himself a good
practitioner--'No savvy,' he replied, more lightly still. At
length the leaves burst in a flame, which he continued to feed; a
thick, light smoke blew in my face, and the flames streamed against
and scorched my clothes. He in the meanwhile addressed, or
affected to address, the evil spirit, his lips moving fast, but
without sound; at the same time he waved in the air and twice
struck me on the breast with his green spray. So soon as the
leaves were consumed the ashes were buried, the green spray was
imbedded in the gravel, and the ceremony was at an end.
A reader of the Arabian Nights felt quite at home. Here was the
suffumigation; here was the muttering wizard; here was the desert
place to which Aladdin was decoyed by the false uncle. But they
manage these things better in fiction. The effect was marred by
the levity of the magician, entertaining his patient with small
talk like an affable dentist, and by the incongruous presence of
Mr. Osbourne with a camera. As for my cold, it was neither better
nor worse.
I was now handed over to Terutak', the leading practitioner or
medical baronet of Apemama. His place is on the lagoon side of the
island, hard by the palace. A rail of light wood, some two feet
high, encloses an oblong piece of gravel like the king's Pray
Place; in the midst is a green tree; below, a stone table bears a
pair of boxes covered with a fine mat; and in front of these an
offering of food, a cocoa-nut, a piece of taro or a fish, is placed
daily. On two sides the enclosure is lined with maniap's; and one
of our party, who had been there to sketch, had remarked a daily
concourse of people and an extraordinary number of sick children;
for this is in fact the infirmary of Apemama. The doctor and
myself entered the sacred place alone; the boxes and the mat were
displaced; and I was enthroned in their stead upon the stone,
facing once more to the east. For a while the sorcerer remained
unseen behind me, making passes in the air with a branch of palm.
Then he struck lightly on the brim of my straw hat; and this blow
he continued to repeat at intervals, sometimes brushing instead my
arm and shoulder. I have had people try to mesmerise me a dozen
times, and never with the least result. But at the first tap--on a
quarter no more vital than my hat-brim, and from nothing more
virtuous than a switch of palm wielded by a man I could not even
see--sleep rushed upon me like an armed man. My sinews fainted, my
eyes closed, my brain hummed, with drowsiness. I resisted, at
first instinctively, then with a certain flurry of despair, in the
end successfully; if that were indeed success which enabled me to
scramble to my feet, to stumble home somnambulous, to cast myself
at once upon my bed, and sink at once into a dreamless stupor.
When I awoke my cold was gone. So I leave a matter that I do not
understand.
Meanwhile my appetite for curiosities (not usually very keen) had
been strangely whetted by the sacred boxes. They were of pandanus
wood, oblong in shape, with an effect of pillaring along the sides
like straw work, lightly fringed with hair or fibre and standing on
four legs. The outside was neat as a toy; the inside a mystery I
was resolved to penetrate. But there was a lion in the path. I
might not approach Terutak', since I had promised to buy nothing in
the island; I dared not have recourse to the king, for I had
already received from him more gifts than I knew how to repay. In
this dilemma (the schooner being at last returned) we hit on a
device. Captain Reid came forward in my stead, professed an
unbridled passion for the boxes, and asked and obtained leave to
bargain for them with the wizard. That same afternoon the captain
and I made haste to the infirmary, entered the enclosure, raised
the mat, and had begun to examine the boxes at our leisure, when
Terutak's wife bounced out of one of the nigh houses, fell upon us,
swept up the treasures, and was gone. There was never a more
absolute surprise. She came, she took, she vanished, we had not a
guess whither; and we remained, with foolish looks and laughter on
the empty field. Such was the fit prologue of our memorable
bargaining.
Presently Terutak' came, bringing Tamaiti along with him, both
smiling; and we four squatted without the rail. In the three
maniap's of the infirmary a certain audience was gathered: the
family of a sick child under treatment, the king's sister playing
cards, a pretty girl, who swore I was the image of her father; in
all perhaps a score. Terutak's wife had returned (even as she had
vanished) unseen, and now sat, breathless and watchful, by her
husband's side. Perhaps some rumour of our quest had gone abroad,
or perhaps we had given the alert by our unseemly freedom:
certain, at least, that in the faces of all present, expectation
and alarm were mingled.
Captain Reid announced, without preface or disguise, that I was
come to purchase; Terutak', with sudden gravity, refused to sell.
He was pressed; he persisted. It was explained we only wanted one:
no matter, two were necessary for the healing of the sick. He was
rallied, he was reasoned with: in vain. He sat there, serious and
still, and refused. All this was only a preliminary skirmish;
hitherto no sum of money had been mentioned; but now the captain
brought his great guns to bear. He named a pound, then two, then
three. Out of the maniap's one person after another came to join
the group, some with mere excitement, others with consternation in
their faces. The pretty girl crept to my side; it was then that--
surely with the most artless flattery--she informed me of my
likeness to her father. Tamaiti the infidel sat with hanging head
and every mark of dejection. Terutak' streamed with sweat, his eye
was glazed, his face wore a painful rictus, his chest heaved like
that of one spent with running. The man must have been by nature
covetous; and I doubt if ever I saw moral agony more tragically
displayed. His wife by his side passionately encouraged his
resistance.
And now came the charge of the old guard. The captain, making a
skip, named the surprising figure of five pounds. At the word the
maniap's were emptied. The king's sister flung down her cards and
came to the front to listen, a cloud on her brow. The pretty girl
beat her breast and cried with wearisome iteration that if the box
were hers I should have it. Terutak's wife was beside herself with
pious fear, her face discomposed, her voice (which scarce ceased
from warning and encouragement) shrill as a whistle. Even Terutak'
lost that image-like immobility which he had hitherto maintained.
He rocked on his mat, threw up his closed knees alternately, and
struck himself on the breast after the manner of dancers. But he
came gold out of the furnace; and with what voice was left him
continued to reject the bribe.
And now came a timely interjection. 'Money will not heal the
sick,' observed the king's sister sententiously; and as soon as I
heard the remark translated my eyes were unsealed, and I began to
blush for my employment. Here was a sick child, and I sought, in
the view of its parents, to remove the medicine-box. Here was the
priest of a religion, and I (a heathen millionaire) was corrupting
him to sacrilege. Here was a greedy man, torn in twain betwixt
greed and conscience; and I sat by and relished, and lustfully
renewed his torments. Ave, Caesar! Smothered in a corner, dormant
but not dead, we have all the one touch of nature: an infant
passion for the sand and blood of the arena. So I brought to an
end my first and last experience of the joys of the millionaire,
and departed amid silent awe. Nowhere else can I expect to stir
the depths of human nature by an offer of five pounds; nowhere
else, even at the expense of millions, could I hope to see the evil
of riches stand so legibly exposed. Of all the bystanders, none
but the king's sister retained any memory of the gravity and danger
of the thing in hand. Their eyes glowed, the girl beat her breast,
in senseless animal excitement. Nothing was offered them; they
stood neither to gain nor to lose; at the mere name and wind of
these great sums Satan possessed them.
From this singular interview I went straight to the palace; found
the king; confessed what I had been doing; begged him, in my name,
to compliment Terutak' on his virtue, and to have a similar box
made for me against the return of the schooner. Tembinok', Rubam,
and one of the Daily Papers--him we used to call 'the Facetiae
Column'--laboured for a while of some idea, which was at last
intelligibly delivered. They feared I thought the box would cure
me; whereas, without the wizard, it was useless; and when I was
threatened with another cold I should do better to rely on pain-
killer. I explained I merely wished to keep it in my 'outch' as a
thing made in Apemama and these honest men were much relieved.
Late the same evening, my wife, crossing the isle to windward, was
aware of singing in the bush. Nothing is more common in that hour
and place than the jubilant carol of the toddy-cutter, swinging
high overhead, beholding below him the narrow ribbon of the isle,
the surrounding field of ocean, and the fires of the sunset. But
this was of a graver character, and seemed to proceed from the
ground-level. Advancing a little in the thicket, Mrs. Stevenson
saw a clear space, a fine mat spread in the midst, and on the mat a
wreath of white flowers and one of the devil-work boxes. A woman--
whom we guess to have been Mrs. Terutak'--sat in front, now
drooping over the box like a mother over a cradle, now lifting her
face and directing her song to heaven. A passing toddy-cutter told
my wife that she was praying. Probably she did not so much pray as
deprecate; and perhaps even the ceremony was one of disenchantment.
For the box was already doomed; it was to pass from its green
medicine-tree, reverend precinct, and devout attendants; to be
handled by the profane; to cross three seas; to come to land under
the foolscap of St. Paul's; to be domesticated within the hail of
Lillie Bridge; there to be dusted by the British housemaid, and to
take perhaps the roar of London for the voice of the outer sea
along the reef. Before even we had finished dinner Chench had
begun his journey, and one of the newspapers had already placed the
box upon my table as the gift of Tembinok'.
I made haste to the palace, thanked the king, but offered to
restore the box, for I could not bear that the sick of the island
should be made to suffer. I was amazed by his reply. Terutak', it
appeared, had still three or four in reserve against an accident;
and his reluctance, and the dread painted at first on every face,
was not in the least occasioned by the prospect of medical
destitution, but by the immediate divinity of Chench. How much
more did I respect the king's command, which had been able to
extort in a moment and for nothing a sacrilegious favour that I had
in vain solicited with millions! But now I had a difficult task in
front of me; it was not in my view that Terutak' should suffer by
his virtue; and I must persuade the king to share my opinion, to
let me enrich one of his subjects, and (what was yet more delicate)
to pay for my present. Nothing shows the king in a more becoming
light than the fact that I succeeded. He demurred at the
principle; he exclaimed, when he heard it, at the sum. 'Plenty
money!' cried he, with contemptuous displeasure. But his
resistance was never serious; and when he had blown off his ill-
humour--'A' right,' said he. 'You give him. Mo' betta.'
Armed with this permission, I made straight for the infirmary. The
night was now come, cool, dark, and starry. On a mat hard by a
clear fire of wood and coco shell, Terutak' lay beside his wife.
Both were smiling; the agony was over, the king's command had
reconciled (I must suppose) their agitating scruples; and I was
bidden to sit by them and share the circulating pipe. I was a
little moved myself when I placed five gold sovereigns in the
wizard's hand; but there was no sign of emotion in Terutak' as he
returned them, pointed to the palace, and named Tembinok'. It was
a changed scene when I had managed to explain. Terutak', long,
dour Scots fisherman as he was, expressed his satisfaction within
bounds; but the wife beamed; and there was an old gentleman
present--her father, I suppose--who seemed nigh translated. His
eyes stood out of his head; 'Kaupoi, Kaupoi--rich, rich!' ran on
his lips like a refrain; and he could not meet my eye but what he
gurgled into foolish laughter.
I might now go home, leaving that fire-lit family party gloating
over their new millions, and consider my strange day. I had tried
and rewarded the virtue of Terutak'. I had played the millionaire,
had behaved abominably, and then in some degree repaired my
thoughtlessness. And now I had my box, and could open it and look
within. It contained a miniature sleeping-mat and a white shell.
Tamaiti, interrogated next day as to the shell, explained it was
not exactly Chench, but a cell, or body, which he would at times
inhabit. Asked why there was a sleeping-mat, he retorted
indignantly, 'Why have you mats?' And this was the sceptical
Tamaiti! But island scepticism is never deeper than the lips.
